


Hateful Reflection

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (mentioned) - Freeform, Body Dysphoria, Gen, Misogyny, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-17
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-04-15 04:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4593297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>For once, Tom does not view the imperfections in his body, the ones that make him unlike a normal man, with repressed disgust - instead, they take on a new, saving sheen, for at least they are not shared with that </i>other<i> Tom Riddle.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hateful Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> I've thought about this variation on Tom Riddle a couple of times. This is the first time I've written it out.

Tom stares into the mirror and hates his Muggle face.

The one good inheritance he had, aside from his magic - his handsome looks, his broad-shouldered, slim-hipped body - and it's all in imitation of a traitorous _Muggle_ who abandoned his mother. Perhaps she worked some magic to deliberately make him look like his father. The Muggles he interrogated all swore that "hideous woman" had regarded "young Riddle" as little less than a god, after all.

He feels a maddening itch beneath the surface, like a reptile must feel when it begins to shed its skin. But he cannot shed his form. The pollution pervades his entire body.

He looks down at his hands and turns them over, examining the long, delicate fingers, the hands that undoubtedly do not resemble those of that tall, strapping,  _other_ Tom Riddle...

Once, another one of the Slytherin boys joked that he had a girl's hands. He'd fixed his gaze upon the boy and told him clearly and firmly that those were masculine hands. The boy had tried to break his gaze, but could not, any more than a rodent could break the gaze of a swaying serpent. They were masculine hands. A nervous smile, an uncomfortable laugh, it was just a _joke_ , Tom, let it - They were a man's hands. They were a man's hands. They were a man's hands. Do you understand? They were -

He remembers clearly and pleasantly the sensation of the other boy's perception breaking. Yes, the other boy had repeated, they were a man's hands. And the boy was always more obedient after that. It had been a relief and a comfort. He should have done it long before.

Yes - none could doubt that Tom Riddle is a man. It is obvious. Well, laughable anyone might think otherwise, really - even when he was a child, whoever had heard of a girl named Tom?

He exhales through his teeth. Yes, that was the first piece of indisputable evidence of Muggle stupidity. It was obvious to him from the start, and every relevant enchantment at Hogwarts, whether or not it had wavered for a second before bowing to his will, recognized him as a boy - and now as a man. The other Slytherins never questioned - not that he gave them opportunity to question, but they learned quickly enough to correct themselves if ever they joked about effeminacy in any manner, whether over his fine hands, his sinuous walk, or his high voice. Tom Riddle's rage, from the start, was recognized as something which no wizard or witch ought to provoke if they valued their safety or their lives.

The Muggles were much more slow. He remembers the laughter, the scorn, and the beatings for his childish attempts to point out the obvious. He may have been quiet, yes, and more inclined to hang back and think than rush into peril like other young boys, but stuffing him into a _dress_? Expecting him to be _proper_ and _demure_? Telling him to not waste his time learning because no prospective parents would want a smart-aleck little girl?

Oh, that nerve _never_ recovered from being rubbed raw. Seven years of misery. Seven years before his nascent power grew to the point that, when he protested, the Muggles _stopped_ _to listen_ and later _obeyed_. In unguarded moments, when he comes close to sleeping and lets his mind drift away from what he knows of his own inherent greatness and power, he thinks that his magical talents developed to such a spectacular extent because, unlike these ordinary children who wasted their early magical development laughing and playing and performing amateur's tricks, he spent his childhood systematically bending the mind of every Muggle in that damnable orphanage and exacting revenge for the _humiliation_ of the life to which they once subjected him. It did not matter that they did not even remember what they had done. They _had done it_. And so, by the age of eleven, he was already well-versed in the arts of hatred and revenge. Arts that served him very well in the House of Serpents indeed.

But the man that is Tom Riddle is an imperfect replication of another man named Tom Riddle - one who dared cast a descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself into the cold, when he should have been honored she would touch him at all. For once, Tom does not view the imperfections in his body, the ones that make him unlike a normal man, with repressed disgust - instead, they take on a new, saving sheen, for at least they are not shared with that _other_ Tom Riddle.

The thought of being smooth, slender-fingered, and sharp-voiced fills him with pleasure, because those are traits that are not Tom Riddle's; he heightens the pleasure until the image in his mind is utterly warped beyond a human form, because it is the distillation of all that distinguishes him from Tom Riddle.

But he does not suddenly desire the parts of him that are embarrassing, uncomfortable, not befitting a man: instead, he imagines himself devoid of any such parts at all, either those of a woman or those of Tom Riddle, and abstracted into a perfect form without any of those ugly parts that contribute to the perpetuation of humanity. Because he will not perpetuate, he has no need of perpetuation: Slytherin's current heir will be the final one, alone and eternal, the apex of the line, reigning forever and ever, and _amen_.

Voldemort opens his eyes, for a moment seeing the beautiful, serpentine form that is to come superimposed over his ugly, _Muggle_ reflection, and smiles a mirthless smile.

**Author's Note:**

> In case it was unclear, this Tom's identity is definitely male, not nonbinary, but he desires a neuter body for personal/aesthetic reasons. While it's out of the ordinary, I don't think anyone would characterize Lord Voldemort as psychologically _ordinary_.
> 
> * * *
> 
> A note, just in case: there is a _fantastic_ [story](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7658662/1/All_Roads_Lead_to_Rome) in which Tom Riddle's possible routes through life branch out through all four Houses, and each cites the particular virtues of his House as the reason for his actions... and yet they all converge in Lord Voldemort. Similarly here. Though Tom's situation influences his decisions, past, present, and future, others in his situation would not take the same actions, nor would they find such actions justified. In canon, Tom's childhood as an unloved orphan "made" him pursue power and domination, while Harry's childhood as an unloved orphan "made" him pursue friends and justice; that's one perspective, but another is that their similar circumstances did not "make" them good or evil, only how they reacted to that and the choices they made as a result. 
> 
> I bring this up because... from this Tom's perspective, his having been not recognized as a boy was an influence upon how he behaved at the orphanage and the lessons there that he learned for life. But, had he been a cisgender boy, would he have ultimately turned out much different, all other things unchanged? Likely not; he'd instead cite "freakishness", or bookishness, or some other trait as what made him a social outcast and initially drove him to lash out with his magic against others. As the linked fic says, "all roads lead to Rome". It was _this_ Tom's initial _casus belli_ , but it would not drive a similar Harry down a Dark road, however it affected him. (Unless it was a Dark!Harry fic, of course...) 
> 
> Apologies for the rambling. I'm just worried that writing a villainous character as trans might seem to have problematic implications when that wasn't my intent at all. Hopefully this note will turn out to have been unnecessary...


End file.
